Plan, deliver and review feed

What this workflow achieves

This workflow connects the feed physically held on the farm with the recipe, daily plan and work actually completed. These are separate records:

Record	What it proves
Feed product and stock	What feed the farm uses, its unit, nutrition/cost evidence and recorded quantity on hand.
Ration	The intended ingredient recipe per animal per day.
Feed plan	Which ration applies to a physical pen, during which dates and how many feeds are expected each day.
Feeding event	What was actually offered to one animal or one pen at a farm-local time.
Refusal	The measured feed left after that event. Blank means unknown; zero means measured none.
Variance	A comparison of planned and recorded feed over a selected period.

Creating a ration does not receive stock or prove feeding. Creating a plan does not generate feeding events. A feeding event consumes recorded stock, but it does not prove the animals ate all of it unless refusal was measured.

1. Check the feed product

Open Inventory → Products or Feed → Overview → Add Feed and find the product before creating another one.

Prefer Setup → Add from library → Products when the governed catalogue already contains the feed. Create a local product only when the library does not contain the real item used by the farm. Confirm:

• product name and code;
• category/type is suitable for feed;
• stock unit matches receipts and physical measurements;
• feed nutrition, especially dry-matter percentage, is based on the current specification or analysis;
• cost evidence uses the farm’s chosen stock unit; and
• stock tracking is enabled when Farmlync should consume the item from inventory.

Do not create differently capitalised copies of the same product. Current farm-product identity is case-sensitive, so visually similar duplicates can coexist and make later receipts and feeding selection ambiguous.

2. Receive the physical stock

If the product is stock-tracked, open Inventory → Feed Stock and record the delivery before recording feeding.

Select the actual product and enter the received quantity, unit, receipt date, batch or lot details, cost and expiry evidence available from the supplier. Save, then verify the new on-hand balance and movement history.

The recorded receipt must represent a real delivery. A negative-stock acknowledgement on a later feeding event permits that event to be recorded; it does not repair the missing receipt or prove the balance is correct.

3. Create the ration recipe

Open Feed → Rations → Create Ration.

Control	What to enter or check
Name *	Clear farm-facing name, up to 200 characters. Use one canonical spelling; active-name duplicate checks are currently case-sensitive.
Description	Optional purpose or feeding instructions, up to 1,000 characters.
Feed	Select an active feed inventory product. Add each real ingredient once.
Fresh kg/day *	As-fed kilograms of that ingredient per animal per day. Enter a non-negative value up to 99,999,999.99, with no more than two decimal places.
DM %	Optional dry-matter override from current evidence, between 0 and 100, with no more than two decimal places. Leave blank to use the product value when available.
DM kg/day	Calculated from fresh quantity and dry matter. When editing this figure, the form can recalculate Fresh kg/day. Review the result.
% ration DM	Calculated contribution to total ration dry matter. It is a composition aid, not an instruction to add that percentage by weight.
Cost/day	Indicative ingredient and ration cost when every required product price is available.

At least one ingredient is required. Review the totals for as-fed kilograms, dry-matter kilograms, ration dry-matter percentage and cost per animal per day before saving. A missing dry-matter or price value makes the corresponding total incomplete; do not treat a partial total as zero.

Use Edit for a genuine correction or recipe change. Historical reporting currently reads some ration information from the current recipe, so preserve external formulation evidence when a material recipe changes. Deactivate removes the ration from intended new use without deleting existing plans; Reactivate makes it available again. Do not select an inactive ration for new feeding work even if a current picker displays it.

4. Assign the ration to a physical pen

Open Feed → Feed Plans → Create Feed Plan.

Control	What to enter or check
Pen *	Physical farm pen receiving this plan. Logical animal groups are not plan targets. The displayed count is today’s roster, so verify it.
Ration *	Active ration intended for this pen. Review its ingredients, daily quantity and indicative cost.
Effective From *	First farm-local day the plan applies; defaults to today.
Effective To	Optional last day, on or after the start. Leave blank only for an open-ended plan.
Feeds per day *	Planned delivery frequency from 1 to 12; default is 1. This helps calculate the suggested quantity for each feed.
Notes	Optional plan instructions, up to 1,000 characters.

Farmlync rejects an overlapping plan for the same pen. If the pen already has a plan, close or edit its effective period before creating the replacement. A saved plan is current only when it is active and farm today lies within its effective dates.

When editing, the pen is fixed. You can change ration, dates, frequency and notes. To move the schedule to another pen, retire the old plan and create the correct plan for the other pen. Deleting a plan does not delete feeding events, but current historical variance can lose that plan’s coverage; use deletion only when the plan itself should no longer remain as evidence.

5. Review today’s work before feeding

Open Feed → Overview.

• Today’s feeding compares plan-matched recorded kilograms with planned kilograms for each active pen plan. Off-plan feed is shown separately and does not complete the intended ration.
• A progress value is capped at 100%; green means met, amber means 60–99% and red means below 60%.
• 30-day feed cost comes from recorded feeding events with cost evidence.
• Cost/cow/day is an indicative calculation based mainly on saved pen-event animal counts. It is not a complete per-animal accounting measure, especially when direct-animal events or missing counts exist.
• Refusal % uses recorded refusals; events with no refusal observation cannot prove full intake.
• The stock forecast estimates days remaining from recent consumption. The current “14-day” calculation uses an inclusive 15-day window divided by 14, so treat it as an early warning rather than a precise depletion date.

Use red or amber stock warnings to investigate receipts, units, unrecorded events and physical stock before ordering. Forecast bands are red below 3 days, amber from 3 through 7 days and green above 7 days.

6. Record feed for one animal

Open Feed → Feeding Events → Record Feeding, then choose Individual.

Control	What to enter or check
Feeding date and time *	Actual completed farm-local time. Current validation can accept a future value and consume stock immediately, so never use this as a scheduler.
Animal *	Active animal that actually received the feed. Search and verify its identifiers.
Ration / Feed Item	Choose exactly one. Ration distributes the total across its ingredients; Feed Item consumes one selected product.
Portion of daily ration	For a ration, choose Full day, 50%, 33.3%, 25% or a custom percentage greater than zero and no more than 100. This supports plan comparison; stock uses actual quantity.
Quantity (kg, as-fed) *	Positive total amount offered. Use a suggestion only when it matches the physical work.
Refusal (kg)	Optional measured leftover, from zero to the offered quantity.
Cost per kg	Optional non-negative as-fed cost. Farmlync suggests a stock-derived product or weighted ration value when evidence is available.
Override reason	Required when manually overriding cost; maximum 500 characters.
Notes	Optional operational context, up to 1,000 characters.

Review calculated intake, cost and stock impact before saving. Do not use an inactive ration for a new event even if it appears in the picker.

7. Record feed for a pen

Choose Pen when the physical delivery was shared by a pen.

1. Enter the actual farm-local feeding time.
2. Select the physical pen actually fed.
3. Confirm Animal Count as a positive whole number. Farmlync initially uses the current pen count, but the event must store the number actually sharing that feed at that time.
4. Select exactly one ration or direct feed item.
5. For a ration, choose the applicable daily portion.
6. Enter the positive total as-fed kilograms delivered to the whole pen. Use can copy the plan suggestion; it does not prove that amount was delivered.
7. Enter optional measured refusal and cost evidence.
8. Review stock impact and save.

The event is one pen-level fact. Per-animal economics can later allocate it using the pen roster at the event date and the saved count; an incorrect pen, time or count distorts those allocations.

8. Resolve a negative-stock warning

Before save, Stock impact shows the expected product movement. A direct feed consumes the chosen product. A ration consumes its ingredients in proportion to the saved recipe and total amount entered.

When the calculation would take a tracked product below zero:

1. first recheck product, unit, quantity and missing receipts;
2. if the physical feeding genuinely happened, acknowledge the negative result;
3. enter the required reason, no more than 500 characters; and
4. save, then reconcile the affected inventory record against physical stock.

Do not acknowledge a warning merely to clear the form. The saved reason explains why work was recorded despite incomplete stock evidence; it does not convert the negative balance into a verified quantity.

9. Verify and correct the event

Return to Feed → Feeding Events and confirm date/time, type, ration/feed, quantity, refusal, intake, animal count, cost and notes. The list shows 20 rows per page within its selected farm-local date window. Use Details to inspect frozen ingredient quantities and stock/cost effect.

The current list labels individual events only as Individual and does not show the animal’s tag/name. Confirm attribution through the animal’s history when necessary.

Use:

• Record Refusal when leftover feed is measured later;
• Edit Refusal to correct that measurement;
• Edit when the feeding occurred but its occurrence, target, feed, quantity, cost or note was entered incorrectly; or
• Void only when the recorded event did not happen or belongs to the wrong job.

Refusal accepts 0 through the offered quantity. 0 is a measured zero; a dash/blank means no measurement. A stale-version response means another user changed the event—reload and review before saving again.

An edit reverses the prior stock effect and applies the corrected effect atomically. Current correction validation is weaker than creation for replacement animal/pen targets, so select only a currently valid target in this farm and verify the resulting stock movement.

Void requires a reason of 1–500 characters, restores stock and retains the event as audit history. Enable Show voided to inspect it. Although current rows still display mutation controls for voided events, the API rejects those changes; treat a voided row as read-only.

10. Compare the plan with actual feeding

Open Feed → Variance.

Control	How to use it
Pen *	Select the physical pen being reviewed.
From / To *	Inclusive farm-local range; default is the last 7 days and maximum is 365 days.
Animal Count *	Positive manual count to use for planned quantity. Enter the governed count for the reviewed period; Farmlync does not derive it from pen membership.

Farmlync compares each covered plan day with plan-matched feeding events:

• Planned = ration kg per animal per day × entered animal count × covered days;
• Actual = recorded quantity minus recorded refusal for covered events;
• Variance = Actual minus Planned; and
• an unrecorded refusal is treated as zero in the calculation, although operationally it remains unknown.

Green means less than 5% absolute variance, amber 5–15% and red above 15%. These colours identify investigation priority; they do not diagnose feed efficiency.

If the range has days without plan coverage, feeding on those days is excluded from Actual. The current page does not show the excluded event count or kilograms, so inspect Feeding Events before concluding that no feed was recorded. Cost variance can also be a partial sum when ingredients lack price evidence, and historical results can change when current ration recipes or product costs change.

11. Investigate a difference

Check, in this order:

1. selected farm, physical pen and farm-local date range;
2. plan effective dates and whether a plan was deleted or changed;
3. manual animal count versus the roster actually fed;
4. ration and portion selected on each event;
5. as-fed units and total quantity;
6. refusal measurements, distinguishing blank from zero;
7. direct/off-plan feed excluded from the ration comparison;
8. missing receipts, negative-stock acknowledgements and stock adjustments; and
9. missing or changed nutrition/cost evidence.

Correct the source record that is wrong. Do not create balancing feed events solely to force variance to zero.

Completion checklist

• Each feed product has the correct unit, nutrition and cost evidence.
• Physical deliveries are received and on-hand quantities were checked.
• Ration ingredients and daily as-fed/dry-matter totals match the intended recipe.
• An active, non-overlapping plan is assigned to the correct physical pen.
• Every feeding event records actual farm-local time, target, feed and quantity.
• Pen events store the number of animals actually fed.
• Negative stock is either prevented or followed by inventory reconciliation.
• Refusal is recorded only from a measurement; blank and zero are not confused.
• Corrected/voided events and restored stock were verified.
• Variance was reviewed together with coverage and pricing limitations.

For control-level references, see Feed overview, Rations, Feed plans, Feeding events, Variance and Feed Stock.